


E-Minus

by PrussianBluu (ryuutora)



Category: Free!
Genre: Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Astronaut Nagisa, Hurt/Comfort, It is not, M/M, Tragedy, also Scientist Rei, and death, hell yeah, like gravitational fields and combusting ships, scary space shit, sorry - Freeform, this may sound cute but let me tell you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-28
Updated: 2014-07-28
Packaged: 2018-02-10 20:14:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2038596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryuutora/pseuds/PrussianBluu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frantically pressing buttons is exactly what Nagisa has repeatedly been instructed not to do in his career as an astronaut. Unfortunately, it’s the only option he has left in this situation.</p>
<p>(Major malfunctions put Nagisa in a bad place, and his last act is to call Rei for comfort.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	E-Minus

**Author's Note:**

> This is kinda sad, so I'm sorry about that. I already posted it on Tumblr. You may have seen it there.  
> I'm not kidding about the scary space shit though. Like Nagisa is in a really terrifying and inescapable position and if you get scared easily I'd advise against reading this.
> 
> "'E' stands for 'Encounter', as with a comet or some other space object."

Frantically pressing buttons is exactly what Nagisa has repeatedly been instructed not to do in his career as an astronaut. Unfortunately, it’s the only option he has left in this situation.

The controls aren’t working. There’s no way to navigate properly, or at all, and the pod itself is too damaged outside to do much more than float aimlessly. Or, it would be aimlessly, if it weren’t caught in the gravitational field of a planet that every radar warns is absolutely not going to be a good landing. Quite the opposite, actually; red lights explode across the control panel and every reading is the same.

Fatality.

He doesn’t want to die. He doesn’t want to die, but there’s virtually nothing he can do to prevent his death. The pod begins to jerk violently and a shrill wailing is telling him to regain control and save himself. He shuts down the system and the red lights and noise disappear.

He’d thought he was one of the lucky ones. Most of the other pods went down with the ship. He’d thought, even as he looked back at the debris littering the space behind him, that he would get out of this alive, navigate his way back to his own solar system or at the very least to another ship that would take him home. But after the fifth attempt at steering _somewhere_ , he’d realized how futile his efforts were.

So, yes, he’s going to die. And leave behind everyone he knows and loves, just because his adventurous spirit was too much for Earth to contain.

Rei, with all his extensive knowledge of such things, had begged Nagisa to be careful, offering perplexing explanations of everything that could potentially go awry while he was out travelling on a recently-designed ship in an otherwise unexplored part of the universe. There had been many mentions of malfunctions, but never had either of the considered combustion as a possibility.

Or the absolute refusal of an already-crappy escape pod to do its damn job.

Nagisa scrubs his hands under his eyes and fight to keep his breathing even as he tilts his video screen toward himself and dials Rei’s lab. Hopefully it isn’t too late on Earth, lest Rei be sleeping at such a crucial moment, but after a few seconds there’s a quiet clicking and Rei’s face appears before him.

“Hello, Nagisa-kun. How are you?” he asks, attempting to adjust his glasses under his safety goggles before sighing and removing the goggles altogether.

“I’m good. What are you doing, Rei-chan?” He bites his lip to stop himself from sobbing. The pod twists violently and its speed increases.

Rei squints at the screen for a moment, then shakes his head. Fortunately, Nagisa doesn’t have the camera aimed at himself, so all Rei can see, if anything, is the empty chair beside him. “Nothing, really. Just a few experiments with different compounds to test their durability.”

“Ooh, that sounds really cool! Tell me about it!” Nagisa urges, and the temperature of the air around him is increasing exponentially but he adamantly refuses to look out at the rapidly approaching surface of a planet he’s supposed to be viewing from much farther away.

Rei makes a cute little noise of surprise, because oh, Nagisa wants to know more about science and that must be so exciting for him; Nagisa wishes he could be happier about it. “Yes, of course,” he beams, carrying his camera and screen away from the lab station to sit down as he talks. “Well, see, I spent the morning just sorting equipment to prepare for the experiment, but I’ve been looking at ways to better insulate your suits, despite other advancements in the past clearly improving them already. I thought perhaps a denser but lighter material might work, so I was working to perhaps create something that…”

He would’ve called it Rei, he decides. Of course, he likely wouldn’t have had the authority to decide a name for something as grand as an entire planet, but he would’ve offered it as an option to his crewmates. There would have been a nice trail of Roman numerals following it, too. But everyone always names planets after people from mythology, which definitely isn’t as romantic as naming them after significant others.

Yes, Rei would make a very nice name for a planet.

Maybe not the one Nagisa dies on, but he hopes that someday, in the future, someone will recognize that Rei is important enough to have a whole planet named after him. A whole solar system, even.

“…but some things wouldn’t respond well to sudden atmospheric changes, and with a universe as unpredictable as this, we simply can’t have that. Oh, but I could tell you about what I did in my free time earlier, which — ah, perhaps it may seem unprofessional, given that I’m supposed to be researching things relevant to space travel. Nonetheless, I was observing the capabilities of certain gases we have stored in the back, if only to see for myself.”

He waves his hands as he speaks, ever the dramatic one — not that Nagisa isn’t a million times worse for drama — and Nagisa thinks maybe he can die peacefully with this wonderful, precious human being talking animatedly to him. He reaches out to the screen, but snatches his hand back quickly because it’s not as though he can touch him from so far away.

“I don’t know much about that chemistry kinda stuff,” he offers evenly, hands trembling slightly despite his best efforts to remain calm. The pod jolts again, and a horrendous clattering starts up toward the back. It must be falling apart. He guesses he’ll be dead in about forty-five seconds and tries to hide the danger from Rei. “Oh, whoops, someone’s making a mess in the hall. I think it’s someone’s birthday today.” That definitely doesn’t sound like a party, but it’s the best he can do under pressure. “Anyway, how did the thing with the gases go~?”

Rei smiles affectionately at him and Nagisa wants to scream because he loves him so much. He forces his breathing to remain calm and controlled despite the ferocious heat and his own wild fear. “Oh, it was nothing I didn’t already know. I was just happy to have an opportunity to work with them. But I can certainly tell you about them. Did you know that sulfur hexafluoride is six times denser than oxygen? It’s the exact opposite of helium, which is six times less dense. So when someone inhales it, rather than their voice becoming higher as it would with helium, it becomes lower. I thought that was something you’d find interesting,” he adds almost shyly, and oh, Nagisa is so, so lucky and he’s so, so petrified. He wants desperately to just be back on Earth with Rei. His throat constricts. “If you’d like, you could try inhaling some when you get home. I’m curious as to what you’d sound like.”

That does it. Nagisa is reduced to a shaking mess of repressed sobs and boiling tears. He’s not _going_ home. He’d love more than anything to go home and see Rei in person again. Death is terrifying. If it had been sudden, if it had been when the ship initially combusted, he wouldn’t have minded so much. But now he’s had time to think, and adrenaline is sending his heart into a fluttering frenzy of helplessness and his fingers feel numb and his head hurts and everything is _wrong_. Such an unjust universe he’s chosen to explore.

“See, it’s so dense, in fact, that you can float light objects on top of i— Nagisa-kun…are you crying?”

He swipes angrily at his eyes and shakes his head, but of course Rei can’t see that, so he steadies himself with a lungful of scorching air. “N-no,” Ah, he’s stuttering already; it shouldn’t be this difficult to keep his secret for just a final few seconds, “it’s like, it’s space dust, y’know? Keep telling me about your magic chemical reactions, Rei-chan~!”

Rei’s squinting at the screen again, and just in time the clattering grows into full-blown cacophony and the temperature spikes and Nagisa feels the pod sway furiously as it approaches the ground. Fifteen, he decides. Fifteen more seconds that Rei must remain oblivious.

“Nagisa-kun, what’s wrong?” Rei is genuinely concerned, a deep frown on his face as he scans his screen for any sign of Nagisa’s presence. “Where are you?”

“Just to the…the side.” The heat is overwhelming. “Sorry, I can’t turn the camera right now. But I can see you, so don’t worry!”

“You sound as though you’re in pain. Did something happen? What’s that racket?” He’s standing now, hands on the table and panic in his eyes. He’d been so worried about something bad happening on the trip. Nagisa hadn’t meant for any of his predictions to come true.

“I’m sorry, Rei-chan.” Eight. “Keep talking, please. Just keep talking for me.” His fear finally gets the better of him. He hunches over in his seat, squeezing his eyes shut and sobbing against his own knees as he curls up on himself. “Don’t leave me alone.”

“Nagisa-kun…Nagisa, please, what’s wrong? What’s happening? Please tell me you aren’t in danger.” Rei’s voice perfectly conveys all of Nagisa’s own panic for him, but it’s still soothing, in a way, knowing he’s not alone in the moment of his death. So despite the fact that he feels like he’s burning already, and the pod is falling apart around him, and Rei sounds ready to cry, himself, Nagisa is calmed significantly by his voice. He doesn’t know what he’d do if he didn’t have Rei to listen to right now. _Five._

“I love you. I love you lots. And forever,” he bawls, trying to focus on Rei rather than the roaring of the flames that are engulfing the outside of the pod. He’d be a lot more excited by the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere if it weren’t contributing to his death.

_Four._ “I-I love you, too. Whatever’s wrong, you can fix it. You can get back here.”

_Three._ Nagisa doesn’t know what else to say.

_Two._ Rei speaks instead. “Please come back to me. Please don’t get hurt. I love you so much, Nagi—”

_One._


End file.
